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I have a roommate and it is not human. It is small, brown, furry and fast. And wily, like the cartoon coyote. He is impervious to my death contraptions and simply will not be fooled by wood-and-wire traps. Of course, I suspect I am not a very enthusiastic killer, either.
I first realized a rogue rodent was freeloading when I noticed the chewed up kitchen towels in a drawer. I wasn’t alarmed, just a little grossed out.
But not that much, really. I’m a guy who lives alone, and my level of domestic sanitation depends on my desire to entertain female company, which ebbs and flows depending on what I’m reading.
So I’m also not bothered by the sawdust-like pile of gnawed fabric beneath the clutch of vintage jackets from my rock-and-roll days hanging in the basement. Live and let live, I say. PETA would love me.
You know, a bat once flew into my house one hot summer night. I swear its wingspan was equal to Bela Lugosi’s spread-out cape—at least several feet across.
I chased him, sort of, to the basement and slammed doors. The next day I called an animal protection agency and some guy with a British accent begged me not to kill it. Kill it? I was scared to death of it. He told me to shine a flashlight in all the rafters and leave the doors open so he could take flight outside.
I did none of that. I’m no Jack Hanna. But I never saw him again. Maybe he morphed into the mouse.
Stupid as I am, I do leave a lot of food out overnight because I live alone and don’t answer to anyone but a rodent. He doesn’t actually seem to be eating anything, though.
What I’m getting at is, do I actually want to kill the pest? And the answer is a shrug.
He only comes out in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep and need to catch up on Tony Soprano’s double life in “The Sopranos,” Al Swearengen’s golden-hearted evilness in “Deadwood” or the ins and the outs of the Baltimore drug trade in “The Wire.” And when he does make an appearance, he’s just a brown flash. It’s always a surprise and he’s obviously afraid of me. So what’s the worry? My ground rules are the following:
A. Don’t watch me sleep.
B. Don’t eat my bed.
C. Stay the heck out of my Wheat Thins no matter where I leave them.
D. Don’t play with my dental floss.
I don’t think any of the above is unreasonable.
There’s also a huge spider that constantly sits in the middle of his web at night, spread across the open doors of my tool shed. If I weren’t so lazy and would close the doors when I’m done, he wouldn’t have a lair. But I wait to put out my trash or recycling in the middle of the night just to see if the old fellow, who’s always there, is doing his hairy spider thing.
And I’m just doing mine.
I guess the worst thing that could happen—and it really would change the equation—is if a mouse became mice or the spider created spiders. It’s the law of nature. Since I’m not reproducing anytime soon, we may have a real population problem coming up. Right now, though, I’m cool with everything. I can’t say they inspire me, but they do make me think.
Besides, in the middle of the night, when you can’t sleep, you’re never alone.
